Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita – 12 (Finale)

Being alone is one thing; choosing to be alone is something else entirely. But if it were up to Watashi, she’d be alone through any means possible, whether by default or by choice. It wasn’t until a bit of maturity on Watashi’s behalf did she finally change her stance on solitude and reverse her antisocial behavior. This occurred when Watashi learned the valuable and timeless lesson to accept others for who they are and not to exclude them for what you think they are. And though she faced difficulties and challenges, Watashi overcame her fear of friendship and changed, nay, improved her life forever.

Through her best efforts, Watashi isolated herself from everyone at her school. Devoting herself to her studies and trying to advance as quickly as possible in order to forever leave this school, Watashi never found the time or the purpose to make friends and form other relationships with her fellow students. A combination of her introverted philosophy and harsh personality saw Watashi end up alone, what she desired at her school. Alone and studious. Alone and a target.

With her seclusion came her unhappiness. She was a target for bullies, being tormented by their attacks and unruly behavior. It put Watashi on the defensive in regards to those around her, effectively shutting herself off to everyone that tried to contact her. Even potential friends, like Curly and Y, were seen as enemies, as the root of her problem. This malicious cycle culminated with Watashi breaking down one night, unable to bear her torture anymore and admitting defeat to the ideals that were founded in lies and pain. Watashi could not live alone, isolated. Neither could the fairy she rescued; death awaits fairies who live alone. So with Watashi pleading for relief, for salvation from her hell, her only friend, the gracious and sympathetic fairy, decided to grant her wish (both through inspiration and by becoming the conductor for RYOBO 230r, denoted by the color change from pearl white to mint green in episode 11).

From that point on, Watashi began to mature as a person. She began to express curiosity toward her fellow students, interested in her peers in addition to her studies. It manifested itself first as sympathy toward Curly who became the target of bullying and isolation herself after following Watashi to Grade 3. Knowing the suffering all too well, and partially to blame for her actions in the past, Watashi offered a hand with a little help from her fairy-controlled robotic friend (it was RYOBO 230r that found Curly’s skirt for Watashi). At this point, it’s worth noting that Watashi never really accepted Curly nor the members of the Wild Rose Society, meaning she was not attempting to make a friendship with her yet and only did so as a means to prevent Curly from enduring such unpleasant hardships. Watashi’s curiosity continued further, this time toward Y, which eventually resulted with Watashi enacting her revenge by bullying Y with her cherished library of BL and homoerotic novels. Cornered and defeated, Y decided that the only way to save herself would be to save Watashi, too, and in exchange for her silence, Y showed Watashi more than she wanted to know about the people she was befriending. Wanting to return to her isolation immediately, regretting her decision to open up to others, Watashi yearned for her solitude once again, nearly spoiling her maturity so far as a means of escape. But when offered the choice by Y, who by association was the most acceptable and obvious choice for a friend, Watashi jumped at the opportunity to prevent her return to her agonizing loneliness. And given Y’s intelligence, personality, and image, Watashi felt like she found an equal. She realized the benefit of befriending Y despite her awkward BL fetish.

And though a brief exposition and a delightful montage, Watashi was able to reunite herself and Y with the Wild Rose Society, at which point Watashi explains that school finally became fun and that she never felt lonely again. With little exposition or explanation on how this came about or, more importantly, why, it becomes a remarkable point of analysis on Watashi’s character. Just prior to these scenes, we saw how Watashi feared for her life and her safety as she was hanging around with a bunch of psychopaths and lunatics in her club. She wanted to avoid them by any means, unaccepting of their behaviors after discovering their true selves. She wanted to exclude herself from this circle because of what she though these girls were. But after befriending Y, despite her BL obsession, Watashi slowly learned that people are more than what we think. Y is an clever, industrious, and rational girl with hints of innocence and trustworthiness. She became an essential ally in Watashi’s quest for the Fairy Tea Party and easily became Watashi’s best friend. And perhaps after seeing how wonderful it made Watashi feel, to have someone to talk to, to share her life with, to aid in her desires, that Watashi felt the need to rekindle her and Y’s relationship with the Wild Rose Society. You figure, in order for Watashi to even consider such a proposition, that she must’ve advanced past the frightful obsessions of each girl and value them for who they are, young ladies who want to be friends with Watashi and find the Fairy Tea Party together. Watashi found the value in friendship with these girls, even if they had some strange tendencies that Watashi would never agree with. And with her rejoining the Wild Rose Society, ignoring her perceived faults with these characters, Watashi was able to form lasting friendships with all these girls. She was able to accept them for who they were and, as a result, Watashi began to enjoy her time at school and never felt lonely again.

From this episode and these scenes were we able to witness the maturity of Watashi, her growth from a troubled child who choose to be alone, to the young lady who enjoyed her life and her friends at school, to the protagonist of the anime who’s social skills allowed her to befriend numerous fairies, an assistant, various townsfolk, and even a couple of pioneers from among the stars. These social skills were essential for Watashi’s success throughout the series and she did so with a kind-hearted, though not always genuine smile on her face. Had the childish Watashi received her wish and never learned the skills of accepting others, then who knows what difficulties and problems Watashi would have faced when she was working as a mediator for the UNCC. Who knows if she even would’ve received the position or lasted on the job for more than a few assignments? Probably not considering how essential it is that she remains on good terms with the local fairies and the local humans.

This episode showed the growth of Watashi from a child to an adult by learning to accept people for who they are. Before, Watashi would use false images and impressions of these people as a reason to avoid them and remain in isolation. It wasn’t until the fairy inspired her (and through helping her as her robotic companion) that Watashi was able to converse with other students and create the opportunity to develop friendship. And when faced with the prospect of returning back to her secluded ways after discovering the terrible images of her ‘friends’, did Watashi magnificently display her development as a character and elect to befriend Y and the others in a true, genuine fashion. It is here were we see Watashi become the character we respected and appreciated throughout the anime, the one we adored and treasured, too. Through these episodes, we saw Watashi improve her life through the simple lesson of valuing people for who they are and not for what we think they are. A lesson, we hope, that all of humanity can learn, even should it be in a slow, steady decline.

Though this is unrelated to the episode and the broadcast version of the anime, the Blu-ray discs and DVDs contain specials for Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita meaning the series will contain short side-stories from our favorite anime for the next few months. With these, we can retain the magic and relive the wonders of the series as these products are released periodically in the future. And the first one is of special note for me, seeing how the clever nature of the series was not omitted from these specials. And with a focus on the humor, one of my favorite aspects of the anime, I was enamored with the first special released shortly after the broadcast of the television anime concluded. With this being the final post on the anime, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, I want to use this final section, these final thoughts, to urge or remind fans and viewers of this franchise to watch the specials and continue to support the series from here moving forward. I’d love to see the anime continue and have had many thoughts about starting the light novel, if only I can find it translated first. It’s always important to support whatever, especially whoever you love and it is my hope that through these posts and this blog that you continue to support the anime, manga, and whatever else you love. Also, here’s a pic from the special if this part didn’t convince you. Enjoy!

What a heartwarming message. You certainly took a more positive view than several of the bloggers I’ve been following. As I’m sure you know, we have been watching this in a mixed up order (not random, mind you) so we see a well crafted tale of Watashi’s growth. Although I haven’t taken the time to sift through it all, supposedly you see the opposite happen when you watch it in chronological order, with Watashi becoming increasingly more isolated (declining).

To be honest, I’ll probably never take this approach because I liked the ending, but I think the director did it as a final (incredibly dark) blow. The fairies are constantly messing with Watashi to the point where reality and fantasy begin to blur. She might appear happy, but is the life constructed by the fairies even real? Maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’ll be interesting to see where the sequel goes from here.

I also get the impression that there is something incredibly dark about these last two episodes, but I can’t pinpoint it accurately. On one side, we got a Watashi who is definitively happier than her younger self. She is more open to people around her (despite the blackmailing and all) and doesn’t try to isolate herself anymore. On the other side however, there is something that feel incredibly artificial about the whole thing.

Everyone outgrown their social issues without ever addressing them, and their friendship existed because they needed each others (rather than caring about each other). The scene were the fairy tell Watashi to “join him” in a room filled with bones still creep me out. It didn’t feel like a salvation at all, it was more like a descent into something much darker.

If the fairies were friendly innocent creature, I would probably be convinced that the outcome of this episode is happy. But every wishes made by Watashi ended up backfiring due to the fairies’ misconceptions and lack of common sense. So, why did this one go “right”?

In overall, I still don’t know what to think. It could be a heart warming ending like Avvesione pointed out, or it could be an incredibly sad story about a poor lonely girl. Or maybe there is both…it’s hard to tell.

Like you said, they have all these crazy problem, but they seem to reconcile them without any issues. In a sense they rejected each other’s personalities in order to stay together.in a more basic sense. In short, they’re with each other more out of necessity than actual want.

As far as the fairies go, I see them as Gen Y while the actual humans are Gen X. They have all this technology that supposedly make life better, but that isn’t always the case. For every gain that is made, something else is given up. It seems to fit each episodes’ theme very well, and it would explain a lot if the director was in his late 30’s or older. It explains why the fairies are referred to as “new humans,” and have such a disconnect from the general population too.

Yeah, I don’t really see it like that, but instead a more positive, brighter outlook on life. The way I’m looking at it is more of Watashi making this change in herself rather than an influence from the fairies despite the fairy always being present. Here, we see Watashi overcome these issues without direct intervention from the fairies and eventually grow as a result, more than can be said from the other episodes. It’s here where I see Watashi improve her life and actually begin to love life, something that is often clouded but present in all the other episodes.

As for the blur between fantasy and reality, I fail to see the negativity in that, too. Watashi could be like all the other humans and live a relatively normal, mundane life but she choose to interact with the fairies as the mediator and help connect the two beings together to prevent any dire problems and to facilitate communication between the two. Because of this, she’s often found herself in wacky adventures and crazy situations, but I don’t think it makes her happiness (or sometimes lack thereof) in anyway artificial. Unless her life is forever trapped inside a fantasy or she’s repeating the cycles of the previous mediators, then I’d agree, but for now, I didn’t really get that impression.

It is pretty interesting to think that the theme of loneliness here was also treated in the story of the satellites. Here the story, as you present it, was more about how to overcome loneliness, as opposed to the tale of the satellites, which was more about the impact of it, and the contrast between what we want for ourselves, as opposed to what society asks of us.

My interpretation of the space probes arc is slightly different. Loneliness was an important part to describe the emptiness of space, but I thought the emphasis was put on on Earth being the only habitable place in our world.

While mankind had their eyes set on a nonexistent world, the probes both knew better than anyone that there only home was the Earth, and that’s why they hated their mission.

On a larger scales, I believe this arc demonstrates how mankind often think ahead of itself, and act as if we had many Earths to spare. You had a group of people who were destroying their only home (using electromagnetic wave), while trying to find something in the empty sky to save them.

As a side comment, Pioneer and Voyager aren’t considered satellite since they don’t orbit anything. They are called probe or spacecraft. Not that it really matter tho.

Yeah, I think I agree more with Kaylia on this topic, but that might be because we had a lengthy discussion/argument over that arc when it finished and I might be influenced by his manipulating ways. Kidding aside now, both arcs do cover a bit of loneliness but different aspects of it.

This final arc was about how Watashi chose to be alone, isolating herself from society but realizing she couldn’t last like that and needed to become a member of mankind in order to survive. The space probes arc, however, was more along the lines of how we are truly alone in the universe, truly isolated and need each other in order to survive. The probes are akin to Watashi from this arc, both being isolated (though forced in their case, not by choice like Watashi) and wanted to return to Earth because they knew they’d die otherwise. They’re similar in some ways but different in others.

Wow, cool read.
I realize this is OT, but is there any chance to review some Yasuhiro Yoshiura works? It’s mostly short stuff that shouldn’t take much. Unless you only go for longer animes, then i’d dare to request both gits SAC seasons and Solid State Society. It’s up to you ofc.

As much as I enjoy Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s works (Time of Eve is one of my all-time favorites and I enjoyed Aquatic Language), I probably won’t be review any of his works since I tend to format my blog toward currently airing anime rather than series reviews. Similarly, I’m not that big of a fan of formal reviews and prefer to talk about random subjects (like this and virtually every other post), so it’s another reason why I steer myself away from series reviews. So because of that, I probably won’t write about his works or GITS, at least on this blog.